You Still Waiting There?

The National Security Archive's fourth annual Rosemary Award goes to the US Treasury Department for bringing "a new meaning to the notion of subprime performance."

The award is named after Rose Mary Woods, Richard Nixon's infamous secretary blamed for accidentally erasing the 18.5 minute gap in the White House tapes.

Treasury wins for it's lack of handling Freedom of Information Act requests.

The Department responded in 2001, 2004, and 2007 to a 1997 FOI request on Mexico's actions in stopping drug traffickers. Lots of responses -- but each was simply to ask if the person filing the request was still interested.

The Archive found 74 "Are you still interested?" replies to 42 requests in the last seven years. (Al Kamen/WaPo)

From "Big Dig" to Bridge Collapse

The guy heading up the bridge rebuilding project in Minneapolis was once fired from Boston's "Big Dig."

Federal Highway Administrator Richard Capka oversaw the Boston boondoggle from 2000 to 2001. He caught flack for severance packages he worked out with three lawyers on the project's payroll.

He left with his own severance package of $82,000. Mr Capka returned to the Big Dig in 2006.

As Federal Highway Administrator, he was part of the investigation into a falling chunk of concrete that killed a woman in a tunnel. (Star Tribune)

Heckuva Job, Uncle Sam!

Remember the botched federal response to Hurricane Katrina two years ago? Washington decided to fix everything with a brand new disaster response plan.

But the Bush administration doesn't want terrorists -- or state governments -- finding out about it.

So, the Bush administration worked out their plan in secret. And state leaders also report their input has been largely ignored.

"In my 19 years in emergency management, I have never experienced a more polarized environment between state and federal government." -- Albert Ashwood, Oklahoma's emergency management chief and president of a national association of state emergency managers quoted in the Washington Post

State disaster response people say the parts of the plan the Bush administration did let state leaders see is a step backward because it sets no guidelines for how states and the feds are supposed to coordinate response. (WaPo)

Six Years Ago Today

It was six years ago today -- August 6, 2001 -- that President Bush recieved the infamous Presidential Daily Briefing (PDB) entitled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in US" as the President vacationed on his Crawford, Texas ranch. The Smoking Gun has a copy of it handy. (TSG)

Mice and Men and Hurricane Katrina

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Government (CREW) reports the federal government failed to follow it's own disaster plan in response to Hurricane Katrina.

It took nearly two years and a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit for CREW to get the 7,500 records from the Department of Homeland Security and compile them in their new report.

What's outlined in The Best Laid Plans: The Story of How the Government Ignored Its Own Gulf Coast Hurricane Plans:

Critically, CREW found that FEMA had created a “Southeast Louisiana
Catastrophic Hurricane Plan” (SLCHP), which forecast a range of specific
consequences, including:

• New Orleans would be flooded with 14-17 feet of water, the levee system
  inundated with at least 10 feet of water and the hurricane would move into
  Mississippi;


• One million people would evacuate, but flooding would trap at least
  250-350,000;


• Each hurricane victim would require a minimum of two Meals Ready to Eat, one gallon of water and eight pounds of ice per day.

CREW also posted the raw documents on their website.

Ghost Fleet Haunts California Ecology

An aged maritime fleet located in Suisun Bay off the coast of California is an environmental threat -- dumping tons of lead, zinc, barium, copper and other toxic metals into the bay.

The fleet consists of dozens of World War II era warships and cargo carriers.

The Contra Costa Times reports the rusting hulks have shed more than 21 tons of toxic metals into the water (see picture). And that's created a big environmental problem -- much worse than the federal Maritime Administration office has admitted. (Contra Costa Times)

Tired of Waiting

State lawmakers -- tired of waiting on Washington -- passed more than 1,100 immigration bills of their own in this year's sessions.

The National Conference of State Legislatures reports that's twice the number of last year's record total. (WaPo)

Our Cessna in Red Square

TB Man -- Andrew Speaker -- showed us how vunerable our border security is nearly six years after 9/11. The story of a man -- red flagged as a bio threat -- skirting security to fly around the US and Europe pulls back the curtains on what the Homeland Security Department says they've done to protect us from a terrorist threat -- to let us see how little they've really accomplished.

And TB Man's flight was just the hook that nabbed public attention. From the Washington Post:

"In August, a congressional study said investigators who used fake identification documents and posed as American travelers reported breaching U.S. land border inspections 93 percent of the time in 2002 and 2003, succeeding in 42 of 45 tries. In 2006, testers got through on all 18 attempts."

TB Man is similar to "the Cessna in Red Square." Back in 1984, 19-year-old German Mathias Rust flew through Soviet bloc radar screens and anti-aircraft defenses to land a single engine Cessna on Red Square in front of the Kremlin.

He spent 432 days in a Soviet labor camp -- but showed that the Soviets had a highly flawed national defense. His flight dramatically changed the Soviet's bargining position on treaties with the west -- because he showed the world how vunerable the USSR actually was to an attack.

Andrew Speaker has become the Cessna in America's square. (WaPo)

"I'm Tired of this Mother****ing Tuberculosis, on this Mother***ing Plane!"

Seems the Department of Homeland Insecurity botched several chance to stop the jet-setting-TB-carrying-man.

TB Man is the fellow with the nearly incurable form of tuberculosis who got married, hopped a crowed jet to Europe, flew around that continent on flights to six countries, then came back to the states -- leaving hundreds of people possibly exposed to his disease.

DHS Failures in the TB Man case:

• His name was on a no-fly list -- but he was allowed to board several different planes
• Border agents alerted to stop him -- didn't
• He ducked Italian agents in Rome and hopped another plane when he learnedthe feds were on to him

So TB Man skirts DHS like some character Stephen King could have included in "The Stand." But try to carry that cup of joe on a flight -- and you're looking at serious time, terrorist! (Columbus Dispatch)